The “baby” Rolls-Royce Ghost will be available as a coupe next summer, which should have Rolls buyers clamoring to have a matching set. However, what’s really exciting about the 2014 Rolls-Royce Ghost Coupe is that it will be the first performance model from Rolls in recent memory.

According to Autocar, the two-door Ghost will have a more powerful version of the Ghost sedan’s (pictured) twin-turbocharged 6.6-liter V12 under its elongated bonnet. The Coupe will produce an even 600 horsepower, up from the sedan’s 531 hp.

As with all Rolls models (and those of parent company BMW), the Ghost Coupe will be electronically limited to 155 mph. With 69 more horses, it should get there a tad quicker than the Ghost sedan. That car can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in a very impressive 4.8 seconds.

This performance Rolls-Royce will definitely be fast, but will it be able to go around corners? The company has traditionally eschewed sporty suspension setups for unimpeachable ride quality and impeccable road manners; forcing passengers into their seats with lateral g is not the Rolls-Royce way.

Nonetheless, the Ghost Coupe will apparently have stiffer suspension, riding on a chassis 10 mm lower than the sedan’s and bigger tires. Rolls engineers say the car will be more agile, but that they kept the tweaks to a minimum to maintain that traditional Rolls refinement.

Why does Rolls-Royce need a performance model? The company is one of the least performance-oriented, but most iconic, marques in the business. Still, Rolls and BMW executives have probably been eyeing sales of the Bentley Continental GT and Aston Martin Rapide with envy.

Bentley brings a twin-turbocharged 6.0-liter W-12 (567 hp and 516 lb-ft) and a Le Mans pedigree to battle. The Rapide is basically a four-door DB9, with the same 470 hp, 5.9-liter V12.

Like all coupes, the Ghost will have less formal styling than its sedan counterpart. Instead of just chopping two doors off and calling it a day, Rolls shortened the Ghost both in overall length and wheelbase. The roof is also significantly lower than the sedan’s. The production car’s styling will probably reflect its big brother, the Phantom.

Don’t expect the Ghost Coupe to be a low-slung sports car, though. Despite being the “baby” of the family, the Ghost is pretty massive. It’s based on the BMW 7 Series full-size luxury sedan. Rolls promising a “commanding” driving position that should allow Coupe drivers to look down on the proles.

The Ghost Coupe will adopt a different name before it enters production sometime next year. It will reportedly have its own name, but Rolls has not made a final decision on what that name will be. Whatever it is, it will probably be spirit-themed like the company’s other models (Phantom, Ghost, Silver Wraith, etc.) Maybe the new car will be called Phantasm, or Banshee.

The Ghost Coupe is expected to make its public debut at the 2013 Geneva Motor Show next March; production will start next summer. Buyers looking for a sporty Roller should expect to pay around $250,000 for the privilege.

The 152,455-piece Lego Rolls-Royce Trent engine may be the most complex Lego machine ever built, but it’s nothing compared to the real thing. This awe-inspiring time lapse video shows how they build the turbo-fan engine that powers some of the most popular airliners in the world, including the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

The Trent powers the Airbus A330, A340, A350 and A380, plus the Boeing 777 and 787. The Dreamliner is the only commercial airplane that can actually use both the General Electric GEnx and the RR Trent 1000. The latter is a 12,710 pound (5.7 metric ton) machine that is 9.35 feet in diameter. This variant is capable of creating 75,000 pounds of force (330kN).

This is insane. 152,455 Lego bricks, 677 pounds (307 kilograms) and 6.56 feet long (2 meters). That’s how amazing this Lego cut-out of a Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine is. It has over 160 separate engine components just arranged like the engine that power the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

Rolls-Royce—who presented their Lego engine yesterday at the Farnborough International Airshow—says that it took four people eight weeks to complete, which is quite a feat. The beautiful cut-out shows every detail of the inner workings of the engine, “including everything from the large fan blades which suck air into the engine down to the combustion chambers where fuel is burned.” It required the builders to go through the actual CAD plans of the engine to reproduce every component accurately with Lego pieces.

According to them, it’s the first of its kind in the world. Still, it’s only half the size of the actual engine, which weighs 1.25 tons.

We hardly have words for the machine you see above. On the one hand, we adore the Nissan Patrol with every last ounce of our little black hearts, and there are only a few itches a good Rolls-Royce can’t effectively scratch. So, you’d be forgiven for thinking the progeny of those two players would be automotive nirvana for us. As is so often the case, reality differs heavily from concept. Some enterprising soul in Dubai has apparently stitched the two machines together with questionable results. The finished product doesn’t really look like some half-baked creation, though it isn’t what we would call stylish, either.

Strangely enough, the upright Rolls-Royce grille and wedge hood fit well with the sharp edges of the Patrol’s greenhouse, and the creator has thoughtfully fitted a set of Land Rover taillamps to the rump as well. Either way, if you like what you see, you can snap up this machine and call it yours. The Rolls-Patrol is currently up for sale for the low cost of just $15,800 at current conversion rates. You can bet that’s a far cry less than the original owner had to pay to have this thing built. Head over to Dubizzle.com for a look at the sales ad.

Automotive assembly plants have a reputation of being crusty, grungy places – often in stark contrast to the new cars they’re assembling. But the truth is that modern auto plants are surprisingly clinical in their cleanliness. These days, you can almost hear company officials boasting that their assembly lines are almost clean enough to eat off of – so that’s just what Rolls-Royce has gone and done.

The elite British automaker invited one hundred of its best customers up to its facility in Goodwood for a special dinner that had them dining right on the assembly line – or on tables set up there upon, anyway (the chandeliers were a nice touch, eh?). The guests arrived by chauffeured Phantom or by helicopter before being shown around the plant via red carpet, where craftsmen showed them their handiwork and even let them try their hand at some of it, finishing off with an up-close-and-personal encounter with the new Series II model. Sounds like our kind of fine dining.

Motor Trend reports Rolls-Royce has pulled the plug (literally) on its electric Phantom. Word has it none of the ultra-luxury automaker’s current clients have any interest in an electrified land yacht due to niggling factors like range anxiety and a perceived loss of premiumness. Apparently the world’s super wealthy only feel content when their transportation runs on the tears of crushed ecosystems. That’s a bit odd considering the 102 EX Concept bowed at the Geneva Motor Show with more torque than the buttery-smooth V12 in the standard Phantom. Still, all the torque in the world is no balm for a range of under 100 miles.

While it’s true Rolls-Royce officially quoted a total range of around 120 miles from the 1,452-pound battery pack in the machine’s nose, we’re more than a little skeptical of that figure. Then there’s the issue of keeping the electric Phantom charged. We can imagine the typical Phantom owner isn’t accustomed to waiting for anything, let alone twiddling their thumbs for eight hours while their cripplingly expensive sedan charges. With all that compromise, Rolls-Royce says it just doesn’t make sense to produce the 102 EX.

This could be interesting: Oscar-winners Martin Scorsese and Richard Attenborogh are teaming up to make a film called Silver Ghost, based, in part, on the lives of Charles Rolls and Henry Royce. The screenplay was written by Jeffrey Caine (Goldeneye) and playwright Sharman Macdonald, who also happens to be actress Kiera Knightley’s mom.

According to Top Gear, the biopic will be set at the dawn of the 20th Century, during the seminal days of the auto industry. But the report says the real hero of the story will be one Lord John Douglas-Scott Montagu, the Second Baron Montagu of Beaulieu and a member of British Parliament who used his position in British society to champion motoring.

While we’re not quite sure what all that Barons and Lords stuff is about, reading that in 1899 Montagu drove the first car to enter the yard of the House of Commons made us think he must have been a decent enough chap. According to the report, he even launched a monthly car magazine. And like any good period-film protagonist, he was romantically linked to another key figure in the story, Eleanor Thornton, the woman who inspired the Rolls-RoyceSpirit of Ecstasy mascot that became a defining feature of the marque.

The film is still a long way from the screen, although Scorcese’s involvement can’t hurt its chances of getting made. Neither would casting Knightley as Thornton, if you ask us.

“Stock” is a relative term. Stock cars, for example, like those raced in NASCAR, are anything but showroom stock. And at the opposite end of the spectrum, “stock” is just the starting point when ordering a new Rolls-Royce. The high-end marque offers its customers a virtually endless array of personalization options, and to drive that point, home Rolls-Royce is showcasing the show car seen here at this week’s Beijing Motor Show.

Called the Six Senses concept, this specially equipped Ghost is designed to stimulate each of the five senses – sight, sound, scent, taste and touch – and proffers the singular luxury of a Rolls-Royce as the sixth sense. Sure beats seeing dead people.

The concept is painted in pearlescent Carrara White, with unique forged alloys and an interior decked out in walnut burr veneer, deep-pile lambswool carpeting (even in the trunk), leather headliner with panoramic sunroof, an upgraded sound system and champagne cooler. Check it out in the gallery above and follow the jump for the details in the press release.

Considering how short some product lifecycles have become, it boggles the mind to think that Rolls-Roycehas had the Phantom on the market for nearly ten years now. And with the next-generation model not expected to arrive for another few years, the model that relaunched the brand under BMW ownership stands to reach its Bar Mitzvah before it’s replaced. But in the meantime, Goodwood is keeping the Phantom fresh with the Series II update.

The revisions include a refreshed front end with new bumpers and adaptable LED headlamps, the latest in infotainment systems and a new eight-speed automatic transmission to help the 6.75-liter V12 marginally improve its emissions and fuel consumption figures.

New versions of the Phantom sedan, coupe and DHC convertible are already finding their way to eagerly awaiting (and obscenely wealthy) customers around the world, but Rolls opted to wait until the Beijing Motor Show to unveil the new Extended Wheelbase model. Particularly popular in the Chinese market where extra rear-seat legroom is deemed the pinnacle of luxury, the Phantom Series II Extended Wheelbase model measure a whopping 20 feet long.

That’s more than a foot longer than the now-departed Ford Excursion, and you can check it out in the gallery of high-resolution images above.

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